Donald Trump Proved the Truth Is No Longer Relevant on Meet the Press Yesterday

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of the state of Our National Dialogue which, as you know, is what the Standells would have come up with, had they recorded "Derpy Water."

Before we award this week's House Cup, let us congratulate Ross Cardinal Douthat, Primate of the Archdiocese of Dorkylvania, for his noble attempt at trying to be rational on the subject of the Republican primary donkey-show currently playing to boffo audiences on its 2016 national tour. Alas, this paragraph was required to do such heavy lifting that it fell over backwards and is now hospitalized with disc trouble and a dislocated shoulder.

What Trump has demonstrated is that in our present cultural environment, and in the Republican Party's present state of bankruptcy, the first lines of defense against a demagogue no longer hold. Because he's loud and rich and famous, because he's run his campaign like a reality TV show, because he's horribly compelling and, yes, sometimes even right, Trump has come this far without many endorsements or institutional support, without much in the way of a normal organization, clearing hurdle after hurdle where people expected him to fall.

Dear me, where to begin? Let us just say, simply, that two of the three remaining candidates tasked with being on the first line of defense against a demagogue are Ted Cruz, who says in every speech that the president will nominate a Supreme Court justice who will order the crosses and Stars of David sandblasted off the tombstones at Arlington, and Marco Rubio, who says in every speech—and, occasionally, twice in every speech—that we "should make no mistake" about the president's desire to destroy the country. I'm sorry, Your Eminence. There is no front line in the Republican party against demagoguery any more. Without it, half these people wouldn't have anything to say at all.

Now, as to the Sunday Showz, they're simply hopeless. Long cored out by political celebrity and a desperate desire to not fall off the Beltway A-List, to say nothing of their chronic debilitation by the Neutrality Palsy, they have no reserves left to combat someone like He, Trump, who cares less for the truth than he cares for their good opinion of him. At the Overlook Hotel, where my man Chuck Todd has always been the caretaker, the vulgar talking yam demonstrated his contempt for both the truth and for my man Chuck Todd. I quote the exchange at length because, perhaps, this blog will survive in some fashion and what humanoids are left to scratch out a meager existence on a barren planet will read it and wonder what strange gods brought them to this awful pass. Or something.

CHUCK TODD: Okay. I want to ask you about the moment yesterday in Dayton. Looked like a scary moment, being rushed the stage. I want to ask you. You said it was—you praised the Secret Service, but then you said the man had ties to ISIS, that turned out to be a hoax. Did you go over the top there on that? Where did you get that—

DONALD TRUMP: No, no, no, no. He was, if you look on the Internet, if you look at clips—

CHUCK TODD: Well, it turned out to be a hoax.

DONALD TRUMP: —He was waving an American flag.

CHUCK TODD: Well, it turned out to be a hoax. Somebody made that up, sir.

DONALD TRUMP: Excuse me. He had talk. Well, I don't know what they made up. All I can do is play what's there. He was walking, dragging the American flag on the ground. Is that a correct statement? Was that a hoax too? Was he dragging the flag on the ground?

CHUCK TODD: Well, that I don't—

DONALD TRUMP: And just dragging it along?

CHUCK TODD: I'm talking about the ISIS tweet.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, you didn't see the clip.

CHUCK TODD: We're playing the clip right now.

DONALD TRUMP: No, excuse me, you didn't see the clip. He was playing Arabic music, he was dragging the flag along the ground, and he had Internet chatter with ISIS and about ISIS. So I don't know if he was or not. But all we did was put out what he had on his Internet. He's dragging the flag, the American flag, which I respect obviously more than you. He was dragging the American flag on the ground like it was a piece of garbage, okay? I don't like that. And a lot of people don't like that. And he also had chatter about ISIS, or with ISIS. And you take a look at it. I mean, people are looking at it very seriously now. But you have to check it before you ask the question.

(Let us pause for a moment to discuss what just happened here. My man Chuck Todd is playing the clip under discussion while He, Trump denies what is plainly happening on the electric teevee machine. Isn't this about where a rational television show would conclude that this man is a Gong-Show caliber crank and cut him off? Isn't this where the average late-night radio talk-show would drop the call? Goddamn, Art Bell would have broken for commercial that this point. We continue.)

CHUCK TODD: Well, I—no, we have checked it. That's my point, sir. There's no ties to ISIS for this man. No law enforcement official. And this video that you linked to appear to be a hoax.

DONALD TRUMP: Okay, look, well, was it a hoax that he's dragging the flag? Was that him? It looked like the same man to me. He was dragging a flag along the ground and he was playing a certain type of music. And supposedly, there was chatter about ISIS. Now, I don't know. What do I know about it? All I know is what's on the Internet.

That muffled thump you heard in the distance was democracy, falling down a well. House Cup to my man Chuck Todd, for being there when it happened.

Charles P. PierceCharles P Pierce is the author of four books, mostly recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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